Housing
Houses are buildings that increase Player's City Population and provide Player with rent. Houses do not need supplies. New Houses can be obtained by Daily Bonus, leveling up, completing certain Goals or Collections, buying from RewardVille or having a certain amount of neighbors. All Houses bought in the Build Menu are only a Framework, which must be built to complete the construction. Each building has different times between each time you can collect rent and collection items, scaling from 5 min to 4.2 days. Collection items given can change according to the house you are collecting from. As of April 23rd, 2011, Zynga has added population increase to the things possible to collect when harvesting houses. As of August, 23, 2011, you can now remodel some houses. There is not much information available on this, as of yet. Population is increased with "Pop Min" in the table below upon construction and will go up towards "Pop Max" in increments. Every collection, a house will drop a moving van, similar to the way they drop collectables. Collecting this van will increase population for that house. Chance of drop is low. There are various moving van sizes, that allow for smaller or larger increase in population for that house. Population upgrades are proportional to house size, so a drop for Parkside Villa would be larger than for a smaller house. Parkside Villa, e.g., increments in steps of 60 population (1300, 1360, 1420, etc a total of 14 steps). Bay Point Duplex, in 40 increments (230, 270, 310, etc, a total of 6 steps). Housing This is a list of the houses currently available in the Build Menu. For all housing, see here. Cost and Efficiency A player should assess their own situation and consider which housing will be more beneficial to them. Some players who have enough time to spend in their cities to effectively use businesses, or "active" players, may prefer to ignore the coin intake aspect of housing and instead focus on how they can best use housing to build up their population to assist their businesses. However, more casual players who cannot play often or for longer periods, may consider housing a valuable method of collecting coins. 'Most profitable houses' In terms of rent per hour, the Newlywed House can give 144 coins per hour. However, this would require using all energy gained naturally through the game's energy replenishment system. The TV Terrace is the second most profitable house, it gives 132 coins per hour. Therefore, it would seem best to build Upscale Condos if you were looking for an energy efficient house with a good return of coins, that does not cost CityVille cash. At 52 coins per hour, it only returns 2 coins more than Cozy Cottages, which are significantly cheaper to build. However, Cozy Cottages do have a much smaller population than Upscale Condos which is worth considering if the player is committed to profiting from businesses. 'Efficiently building population' Building up population is important in CityVille for a number of reasons. Firstly, there are a number of in-game goals which require you to increase your population to set amount such as "Fuel Town Finances!". But, perhaps more importantly, having a high population means your businesses will be more successful and turn over at a much faster speed. Basically, the more citizens you have, the more citizens who will be visiting your shops and restaurants. When focusing on building population, players should, of course, build houses with higher population. However, in terms of cost and space efficiency, it becomes apparent that higher level buildings such as Glass Condos and Atrium Lofts, which become unlocked in the highest levels and carry very expensive cost, are not very cost efficient. {C}As the chart shows, the three housing buildings with the highest population are very inefficient in terms of cost. To raise population by 1,000, a player could build 6 Ranch Houses at 1.3% of the cost that they would pay to build Atrium Lofts to raise the population to the same amount. Colonial Chalets, for example, are a favourable choice as they only take up a 3x3 space (thus meaning a player could place 2 Colonial Chalets in the same space used to build Hotel Suites). However the spring bunglow is the best house available in respect to cost and population.Compared to Colonial Chalets, it costs 1000 less (i.e. 9000) and adds 10 more population than Colonial Chalets at the same area (i.e. 3x3). 'Space Efficiency' Optimizing land space is another factor to consider. Not only does this conserve land so that it can be used for other things, the closer housing is to a business, the less travel time there is for the inhabitants. To optimize space, consider destroying low-value housing that was constructed in the early days of city construction. Since housing units appreciate in value as they are used (holding more population), units should be deleted as soon as they can be economically replaced: Then the appreciation will happen on permanent units. 'Maximizing Housing potential' 'Active players' If a player is very active in Cityville, housing may seem a very inefficient way to earn coins. Building up a population is largely useful for businesses - the higher the city's population, the more citizens are available to shop in the city's businesses. Therefore, an active and high level player may wish to focus on buildings which house a high number of citizens, such as Parkside Villas, Garden Cottages, Skyscraper Condos, Glass Condos and Atrium Lofts. An active and high level player might also want to focus on space efficient housing; thus, Parkside Villa. Although these can't be collected from as often as houses with a lower population increase such as Upscale Condos and Colonial Chalets, they serve a greater purpose to players who focus on harvesting goods supplies and keeping their businesses turning over. 'Casual players' Players who are not active with their cities may find housing a lot more useful than active players. If a player can only play for short periods of time, they probably won't find businesses to be profitable enough to help them advance through the levels. However, housing provides a good way for these players to stay afloat and, though it only provides a small amount of coins per day, housing can essentially be one of their only sources of coins. If a player knows generally what time they will play each day, they can benefit from building houses which are ready for rent collection at that same time each day - so, building a house with a 1 day "cooldown" such as Modern Chateau's or Sprawling Mansions. If a player determines exactly how many hours occur between each log in on a general basis, they can choose housing accordingly. Players who only play once every 3 days should therefore focus on building Stylish Contemporary housing, or Loft Apartments. Collections requiring houses * Category:Build Menu Category:Gameplay